A new five-year research agreement will give Viterra exclusive marketing rights to wheat and durum varieties developed by plant breeders at the University of Saskatchewan’s Crop Development Centre.
Dorothy Murrell, managing director of the centre, said the agreement will give CDC scientists access to Viterra’s prairie-wide network of research and field testing sites.
New spring wheat and durum cultivars developed by the CDC will be tested at Viterra sites in Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta, giving plant breeders a better sense of how the cultivars perform in different parts of Western Canada.
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Viterra will also help finance the centre’s red spring wheat and durum breeding programs, although neither party would disclose the amount of funding provided.
In return, Viterra will have first right of refusal on production and marketing rights for a predetermined number of CDC wheat and durum cultivars once they are registered for commercial production.
“This agreement gives us the ability to test our (pre-registration) cultivars, our breeding material, in a diverse landscape at many different sites in all three prairie provinces and in all three soil zones,” said Murrell.
“It really gives us the ability to (collect) good data about our (cultivars) before they move into registration.”
Murrell said the agreement will assist CDC plant breeders in selecting the most promising new wheat and durum cultivars and developing varieties with better disease and insect resistance.
Murrell did not say how many CDC varieties Viterra would market, but she said the number was limited by the terms of the agreement.
“It’s a right of first refusal on a certain number of lines … not all the lines but a certain number of lines … for production and marketing.”
Monte Kesslering, vice-president of seed and crop protection with Viterra, said the agreement will benefit the company, the centre and farmers.
“When you look at plant breeding programs, obviously ensuring that they have adequate resources to generate new material is important, but equally important is the ability to conduct testing across a number of different geographies and under a number of different growing conditions,” he said.
Kesslering said Viterra has similar wheat breeding and marketing agreements with other partners in Canada.
The company does not have its own spring wheat breeding program, although it does have a small durum breeding program in North Dakota.
The CDC’s ability to select the most promising germplasm will be greatly enhanced by gaining access to test sites in Manitoba, where diseases such as leaf rust and fusarium are more prominent, he said.
“To be able to test your material in those (high disease) areas ensures that you’ve got really good selection pressure for those diseases,” Kesslering said.
“The CDC, being in Saskatoon, doesn’t necessarily have those types of conditions in their own backyard.”
Early generations of wheat and durum germplasm will most likely be tested at a limited number of sites in Manitoba.
